War is about winning. There are no rules. It doesn’t matter about the environment. It doesn’t matter about the animals caught up in it. It doesn’t matter about the cruelty or inhumanity.

War is insane. It is no way for civilised people to behave.

In the Iraq war the armour piercing tank shells were tipped with uranium. Uranium is a very dense metal so its piercing powers were great. I wonder how much thought went into the health of the tank crew sitting inside in close proximity to the shells? Or the aftermath of the radioactive pollution left in the environment?

Cluster bombs and mines have been devised with plastic shrapnel so that they cannot be found with X-ray machines. The idea is to wound, incapacitate and cause the maximum pain and inconvenience. It is harder and more time-consuming to deal with the wounded than the dead. As it is not Hollywood most victims are hideously wounded. They were designed with intent. I wonder how much thought went into the civilian population who live with the aftermath? The limbless children? The elephants and animals with legs blown off. The injuries were too gruesome for me to add.

In the Vietnam War the Viet-Cong set a whole range of different traps using sharpened bamboo spikes. You fell into a pit or had your leg or face spiked. They coated the spikes with pig-shit to cause horrendous infections.

In the same war the USA used napalm. It was burning petrol with a viscous base. It was designed to adhere to the flesh and burn. A lot of children and civilians were caught up in the bombing. I still remember the little naked girl running and enclosed in the cloud of orange fire, then running with her skin in strips.

They also devised Agent Orange. It was a defoliant. They could not see the Viet-Cong movements through the jungle so the idea was to remove the jungle. Hundreds of thousands of acres were sprayed without regard to the wild-life or long-term effects. The trees were killed and the habitats destroyed and polluted. People caught up in it, including American soldiers, suffered horrendous effects. Their children were born deformed. I wonder if anybody cared?

I visited the war museum in Saigon. There were pictures of the most terrible defects. Most were too horrendous to show.

They wouldn’t have had to use Agent Orange now. Most of the jungle has been cleared to grow coffee for the Americans. The wild-life has been decimated.

How long do we have to go on creating this havoc, devastation and callous cruelty. A short while ago Vietnam was the enemy. The US and Viet-Cong hated one another and killed each other in the worst ways possible. Now it is a top tourist attraction.

War is madness. There has to be better ways!

NO MORE WAR!!!